Written by Abhishek IyengarEvery October, an interesting cultural phenomenon unfolds in India. Schools announce Halloween parties, children dress up as ghosts, witches, vampires and skeletons, shopping malls put up spooky decorations, restaurants introduce Halloween menus, and social media fills up with photographs of people celebrating a festival that has its origins thousands of kilometres away.
There is nothing particularly wrong with celebrating Halloween. Cultures have always travelled, exchanged ideas and borrowed from one another. But there is a question worth asking: Why are we so enthusiastic about importing another culture's celebrations when we have barely explored the extraordinary cultural imagination already available to us?
Perhaps it is time to stop merely celebrating Halloween and start Indianising it.
Halloween, traditionally observed on October 31, has roots in the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, associated with the transition from harvest to winter and beliefs about the boundary between the living and the dead. Over centuries, it evolved through Christian observances, European folk customs and eventually the popular costume-and-trick-or-treat celebration familiar today. Its modern form has travelled across the world through popular culture, cinema, television and commercial marketing.
India has enthusiastically embraced this imagery. But what is interesting is that we are importing the aesthetics of the supernatural without recognising that our own civilisation has an astonishingly rich relationship with the supernatural.
We have ghosts, spirits, guardian deities, village legends, haunted landscapes, ancestral traditions, demons, yakshas, ganas, vetalas and countless fascinating characters in our folklore. Our stories have never lacked imagination. If anything, we have an embarrassment of cultural riches waiting to be rediscovered.
Why should a child dress up as Dracula when Indian folklore has the fascinating figure of the Vetala? Why should we limit spooky storytelling to witches and vampires when our own literary and oral traditions offer an extraordinary collection of supernatural characters? Why should Halloween decorations always feature pumpkins and skeletons when Indian art, mythology and folk traditions offer such an expansive visual vocabulary?
Imagine an Indian Halloween celebration where children dress up as characters from Indian folklore. One child arrives as a Vetala, another as a Yaksha, another as a character from the stories of Vikram and Betal. There could be storytelling sessions based on regional ghost stories, folk performances, shadow puppetry, masks, traditional music and theatrical interpretations of supernatural legends.
Imagine a spooky storytelling evening featuring tales from Karnataka's folklore, the mysterious stories of Bengal, the legends of Rajasthan, the supernatural traditions of Kerala and the rich oral narratives of India's tribal communities. Instead of simply reproducing an American Halloween party, we could create an experience that is distinctly Indian.
And this is not an argument against Halloween. It is an argument for cultural confidence.
Our traditions already have fascinating expressions of the relationship between the living, the dead and the unseen. Pitru Paksha, for instance, is a period of remembrance and ritual offerings to ancestors. It is not Halloween, and the two should not be casually equated. Similarly, traditions such as Theyyam in Kerala and Bhoota Kola in coastal Karnataka involve deeply rooted ritual relationships with local deities and spirit traditions. They are sacred cultural practices, not costume themes to be casually borrowed for entertainment.
That distinction is important. Indianisation should not mean trivialising sacred traditions or turning every religious practice into a party. It should mean understanding our cultural vocabulary and finding creative, respectful ways to introduce it to younger generations.
The opportunity is much bigger than costumes. It is about storytelling, theatre, cinema, literature, design and cultural education. Our children should know about Halloween if they are curious about it. But they should also know the stories of Betal, the folklore of village guardian spirits, the legends of Yakshas and the fascinating supernatural characters that inhabit our epics and regional traditions.
For generations, Indian storytellers have used the supernatural to explore fear, morality, greed, courage and the consequences of human behaviour. Our folk traditions have preserved stories that are as entertaining as they are thought-provoking. Yet, we often wait for a Western film, television series or streaming platform to remind us that supernatural storytelling can be commercially exciting.
Perhaps the real failure is not that Halloween has become popular in India. It is that we have allowed our own storytelling traditions to remain underrepresented in the cultural imagination of our younger generations.
There is also an economic opportunity here. Indianised Halloween celebrations could create platforms for local artists, theatre groups, mask makers, costume designers, storytellers, folk performers, illustrators and independent filmmakers. Schools could organise Indian folklore festivals. Communities could host storytelling evenings. Theatre groups could create performances around regional supernatural tales. Designers could reinterpret traditional masks and characters into contemporary merchandise.
A celebration imported from elsewhere could become an opportunity to support local creativity and revive forgotten narratives.
This is how cultures grow. They do not survive by shutting their doors to the outside world. They survive by engaging with the world without surrendering their identity.
We should not become so defensive about Western cultural influences that we refuse to participate in them. Nor should we become so fascinated by everything foreign that we assume it must automatically be more fashionable, sophisticated or entertaining than what we have inherited.
The world is increasingly interested in cultural authenticity. Japanese anime draws from Japanese folklore. Korean popular culture has introduced global audiences to its myths and supernatural traditions. Western cinema repeatedly revisits its own legends and folklore. India, with its extraordinary diversity of stories, should be doing the same with far greater confidence.
The next time a school organises a Halloween celebration, perhaps the question should not be whether children should be allowed to dress up as ghosts and monsters. The question should be why we cannot also introduce them to the extraordinary characters and stories that belong to our own cultural landscape.
Let the children enjoy the costumes. Let them have their candy. Let them experience the fun of Halloween. But give them an Indian folklore character to discover as well. Let them learn thestory behind the mask they wear.
We do not have to reject the West to celebrate India. We simply have to stop assuming that everything worth celebrating must come from somewhere else.
Halloween can be an occasion for cultural exchange, creativity and fun. But it can also become an opportunity to rediscover the richness of Indian folklore and storytelling.
After all, a civilisation that has imagined Vetalas, Yakshas, Rakshasas, celestial beings, mysterious spirits and countless supernatural worlds does not need to borrow its entire imagination from a pumpkin and a plastic skeleton.
The West gave Halloween its celebration. India has enough stories to give it a whole new imagination.
Why merely import Halloween when we can Indianise it?
Let Halloween come to India. But let it meet India first.